Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Biden's Cognitive Decline
Aired: 2020-08-06
Duration: 54:12


=== Heshy Socks Sponsorship (01:44) ===

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[00:01:14]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:01:15]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:01:17]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:01:21]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:01:27]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:01:32]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:01:36]  Here's your host, James Smith.
[00:01:38]  Hey, what's up, everybody?
[00:01:40]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:01:44]  I am Dave Smith, of course.

=== Solo Episode on Vacation (13:48) ===

[00:01:45]  I am solo for this episode, and I am on vacation.
[00:01:50]  So if the video of this ends up coming out, that's why you'll see that I'm not in my normal location.
[00:01:57]  I'm on vacation with my wife and my daughter and my sister and brother-in-law and their son.
[00:02:04]  They got a baby a little bit younger than my daughter and my brother.
[00:02:08]  And it's a packed house.
[00:02:10]  So I came out here in the outdoors, in the beautiful outdoors, to record this episode.
[00:02:15]  So I might go a little bit shorter than usual for this episode, but I wanted to talk to you to you good people.
[00:02:21]  And there's been a few things on my mind that I figured I would rant about.
[00:02:26]  So, and also a couple videos that I want to watch.
[00:02:30]  That were, there we go.
[00:02:33]  Maybe that's a little bit better.
[00:02:35]  There we go.
[00:02:37]  So a couple videos that I wanted to watch that were kind of on topic with what I was thinking about recently.
[00:02:43]  And one of them is that, of course, there is a presidential race coming up in three months or three months and maybe a couple days off from that, but just about three months away from presidential election that does seem to be a rather important one.
[00:03:03]  And I know everybody always says this is the most important election of your lifetime.
[00:03:10]  And I know everybody rolls their eyes when people say that.
[00:03:14]  But man, this one kind of does feel that way.
[00:03:18]  And not so much for policy reasons.
[00:03:21]  It's really more just for the heart and soul of the country and what direction we're going in and what we do with this crazy little country of ours that is really in a state of social upheaval at the moment and unprecedented everything.
[00:03:44]  So Joe Biden is running for president.
[00:03:49]  So he's got a lot of advantages right now in terms of, you know, the polling and the state of the economy and the virus and, you know, a bunch of other things.
[00:03:59]  But his major, major disadvantage is that he is Joe Biden and he cannot stop being Joe Biden.
[00:04:07]  And he was recently interviewed by Yahoo News, I believe this was.
[00:04:12]  And man, was he Joe Biden in this interview?
[00:04:16]  So let's play that clip and then we're going to discuss.
[00:04:20]  Vice President, your opponent in this election, President Trump, has made your mental state a campaign topic.
[00:04:26]  And when asked in June, if you'd been tested for cognitive decline, you've responded that you're constantly tested in effect because you're in situations like this on the campaign trail.
[00:04:38]  But please clarify specifically.
[00:04:40]  Have you taken a cognitive...
[00:04:42]  No, I haven't taken a test.
[00:04:44]  Why the hell would I take a test?
[00:04:47]  Come on, man.
[00:04:48]  That's like saying you, before you got in this program, you take a test where you're taking cocaine or not.
[00:04:53]  What do you think, huh?
[00:04:55]  Are you a judge?
[00:04:56]  What do you say to President Trump who brags about his tests and makes your mental state an issue for voters?
[00:05:05]  Well, if he can't figure out the difference between an elephant and a lion, I don't know what the hell he's talking about.
[00:05:11]  Did you watch that?
[00:05:12]  Look, come on, man.
[00:05:14]  I know you're trying to goad me, but I mean, I'm so forward to looking to have an opportunity to sit with the president or stand with the president in debates.
[00:05:24]  There can be plenty of time.
[00:05:26]  And by the way, as I joke with him, you know, I shouldn't say it.
[00:05:31]  I'm going to say something I don't, I probably shouldn't say.
[00:05:34]  Anyway, I am very willing to let the American public judge my physical and mental, my physical, as well as my mental fitness and to, you know, to make a judgment about who I am.
[00:05:51]  Wowzers.
[00:05:53]  Wowzers.
[00:05:54]  I don't even know where to start with this.
[00:05:56]  You know, it's it's this has become funny and it's it's like a punchline and and it is goddamn entertaining that particularly the fact that the the vast majority of the corporate press has to pretend that there is nothing wrong with Joe Biden.
[00:06:16]  But this is really now that we're getting down to the last three months, I mean, this is profoundly bizarre.
[00:06:25]  I've never seen anything like this before.
[00:06:28]  The guy, first off, in the clip, he's kind of, I mean, he is legitimately an old person with dementia.
[00:06:35]  That's what you're looking at here.
[00:06:37]  And he even makes those faces.
[00:06:39]  Like, if you've ever known, I mean, I've had a couple in my family, you know, older people who develop dementia.
[00:06:45]  It's very, very sad.
[00:06:47]  And that's what he is going through there.
[00:06:51]  He's even like, I don't know how to explain it, but even down to like the expressions that he makes, you can just this kind of, like it's, it's just not, he's not there.
[00:07:02]  And of course, another thing that's really interesting about this moment is that you see some reporters actually ask him about it.
[00:07:09]  Like it is going to be impossible to completely avoid this as a topic because it's so apparent anytime he speaks.
[00:07:18]  I mean, anything.
[00:07:19]  It can't like there is nothing.
[00:07:20]  He's incapable of doing a pre-rehearsed, you know, short couple minute interview without this being obvious.
[00:07:29]  It's not as if it becomes apparent when he's in a longer format or something like that or when he's pressed.
[00:07:35]  He can't do anything without this being completely obvious.
[00:07:40]  And so he's asked about this.
[00:07:42]  And then what does he say?
[00:07:44]  Comparison about a lion and it's just weird and doesn't really make any sense.
[00:07:49]  Um, he then goes on to say that he's and understand that this is his response to being questioned about his cognitive ability.
[00:07:58]  Uh, this is the one time when you have to have something precise and um, like you, like one.
[00:08:07]  You have to be able to form a coherent message as a response to, are you cognitively up to this job.
[00:08:17]  And his response is that he's very forward looking to sitting down or standing up with Donald Trump at the debates.
[00:08:27]  I mean, that is a, it's a pretty easy sentence to pull off.
[00:08:31]  I'm very much looking forward to debating Donald Trump.
[00:08:34]  And he says, I'm very much forward looking to sitting down or standing up with President Trump at the debates.
[00:08:43]  Oof, I got to tell you, I don't think that he is forward looking to these debates.
[00:08:51]  I really don't.
[00:08:52]  And I got to say, I don't think he's going to be there for them.
[00:08:55]  And they've already been floating these ideas out.
[00:08:57]  It's really something that it's been right at the center of his campaign from the very beginning of the Democratic primaries that he just can't wait to get in there and debate Donald Trump.
[00:09:09]  And this is, I mean, I just on a basic human level, as much as I'm no fan of Joe Biden, you're like, this is going to be a massacre.
[00:09:18]  You do not want to go.
[00:09:20]  This guy is going to collapse into himself, which he ends up doing in the next sentence where he alludes to something and he does this Joe Biden thing.
[00:09:28]  It's something I never see any other politician do or anyone like any, I don't see any other comedians or podcasters or anything, you know, do this, where you just, you say something and then you just go, yeah, you know what, I shouldn't even.
[00:09:42]  Anyway, it's very bizarre, very bizarre for someone who's running for president.
[00:09:49]  Never seen anything like it.
[00:09:50]  And then, of course, he says, you know, if you question my mental or physical, you know, whatever, I forget the exact line, but he flubs that up completely too.
[00:09:59]  This is really, really bad.
[00:10:02]  And I actually can't believe when you look at something like this, I still think there's probably like a 20% chance or something like that that he ends up not being the nominee.
[00:10:10]  As I've said before, you know, if you were like some big money donor to the Democratic Party, I mean, I really think the conversation would be about like, okay, so what do we have to do to get someone else in as the nominee?
[00:10:25]  Because there's still some time before the convention and there is no way.
[00:10:28]  This is like, it's so weird because it's the story of Donald Trump, but he is very beatable right now, very beatable.
[00:10:36]  And you would just think that this is the, you're handing him like his only chance to win.
[00:10:44]  And anyway, so Joe Biden is, I mean, it seems like it's getting worse right in front of our eyes.
[00:10:51]  But he is, if he does end up debating, or even if not, there is still, no matter what signs there might be that make this look bad for Donald Trump, there's still a really, really good chance.
[00:11:05]  Like, I'd say at least 50-50, that Joe Biden is just going to hand this thing to Donald Trump, that he's going to have some type of moment.
[00:11:13]  I mean, if it makes sense, there's been a lot of moments like this, like that video that we just watched, but there hasn't really been the one that will sink him.
[00:11:24]  But there's a really good chance that that'll come because over the next few months, the one thing you can't avoid is that there's going to be more intensified scrutiny on Joe Biden.
[00:11:35]  And I mean, not really on Donald Trump, because there's always that level of scrutiny on Trump, but there's going to be more on Joe Biden.
[00:11:42]  no way around that um and uh there would have been a lot more already if it wasn't for the fact that there have been these like just humongous distractions uh from you know from the presidential election uh you know there's a global pandemic uh you know government lockdowns uh massive protests riots all this so it's you know this all has worked out tremendously in joe biden's favor Because they can keep him in a basement and they can say,
[00:12:11]  and look, we're doing it because we believe in the science and we're being responsible and all this and hope that the whole election just becomes about Trump.
[00:12:18]  Do you like Trump or do you not like Trump?
[00:12:20]  You know, and that's that, that's their goal.
[00:12:23]  And they feel like we can win that game of do you want Trump or not?
[00:12:26]  And I'll tell you, I've talked to a lot of people just away from the podcast world, the comedy world, just like people, friends, family, people in my life.
[00:12:35]  And I know a lot of people who are hoping Joe Biden wins.
[00:12:40]  And these aren't like people who love Joe Biden.
[00:12:44]  They're people who in many ways, I think, are scared of the radical left and are scared of just what the country's become.
[00:12:54]  And there's just, and I got to say, I'm somewhat sympathetic.
[00:12:57]  I mean, I think it's hard to justify supporting a guy because if Trump wins, these maniacs will keep trying to tear the country down.
[00:13:12]  But I do understand, I sympathize with them and I understand where they're coming from, where they're just like basically, and even those who haven't said this, to me, exactly, I think basically their view is that we know that if Joe Biden wins, the radical right wing isn't going to be out in the street throwing Molotov cocktails through windows, you know, but the radical left will do that if Trump fucking wins again.
[00:13:37]  They will.
[00:13:37]  I mean, if Donald Trump wins, there's going to be huge, I mean, there's going to be massive riots, massive.
[00:13:44]  And I think almost everybody knows that.
[00:13:47]  And so I can understand, I can sympathize with people who just don't want to see that.
[00:13:51]  And so they're like, fuck it, just give the country back to Biden and the establishment Democrats.
[00:13:54]  I mean, it's basically the establishment Republicans who are in charge now.
[00:13:57]  Who cares?
[00:13:58]  You know, it's not as if Trump really has some agenda that's like making America great again or anything like that.
[00:14:03]  So it's almost just for the sake of peace and order, let's just fucking hope he's not still in there.
[00:14:10]  But of course, I think anyone listening would realize there's something really troubling about that.
[00:14:15]  You know, you're kind of like, you know, you're letting people terrorize you into negotiating with them.
[00:14:21]  And that seems like a bad strategy and just wrong and unfair in a lot of ways.
[00:14:29]  So it's like, what?
[00:14:29]  So just if one side riots more than the others, then they get, you know, the president that they hate less than the other guy.
[00:14:37]  Because I wouldn't exactly say that they like Joe Biden.
[00:14:41]  But, but yeah, so this is this is going to get real interesting coming down the stretch right now.
[00:14:48]  And it's really, it's almost crazy.
[00:14:49]  I mean, especially for me, right?
[00:14:51]  Someone who like, you know, I obsess over politics to an unhealthy level, probably, but I've made a nice little career off of it.
[00:14:59]  So fuck it.
[00:15:00]  I guess it's okay.
[00:15:01]  Better than when I used to obsess over it and not get paid for it.
[00:15:05]  So that's, I guess, my justification.
[00:15:08]  But I was like, you know, talking about, you guys who listen, no, I was talking about the Democratic primary, like crazy, breaking down every single, you know, week and what happened.
[00:15:16]  And I thought it was really interesting and the whole Bernie Sanders campaign and all that stuff.
[00:15:22]  But even for me, it's kind of like you're like, oh, shit, just three months left.
[00:15:25]  Been spending so much time focusing on the COVID lockdowns and the Black Lives Matter and all this other stuff.
[00:15:31]  And now you're like, oh, wow, we're really, we're getting down to it.

=== Obsessing Over Politics (02:27) ===

[00:15:33]  There's not that much time.
[00:15:34]  This is going to go by very quickly.
[00:15:38]  Of course, with the state of things in America right now, it's quite possible that there's, you know, there's going to be major things that happen in the next three months.
[00:15:46]  I don't think it would be crazy at this point if there wasn't, you know.
[00:15:52]  All right, let's take a quick second.
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=== Burtwalker Novel Promo (15:40) ===

[00:18:01]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:18:03]  So all of this is very up in the air.
[00:18:07]  Who knows what's going to happen?
[00:18:08]  But I'll tell you, they're already saying now, in fact, I believe this is confirmed, that Joe Biden ain't going to the convention.
[00:18:16]  And I called this a while ago.
[00:18:18]  I said, it's not just that this guy can't debate Donald Trump.
[00:18:22]  It's not just that he can't go into a hostile environment with a guy who really, in Donald Trump, who really pulls no punches.
[00:18:31]  I mean, say whatever you want about Donald Trump.
[00:18:33]  Okay, he's not a great debater in the classical sense of the term.
[00:18:38]  He's not coming there with like the most, you know, ironed out arguments and he's just, you know, prepared and knows all of the, you know, data or whatever.
[00:18:47]  You know, he's just, but he's vicious and he will not, and he's smart with his viciousness, like on an instinctual level.
[00:18:55]  He's very, he's very, he's good at using it in appropriate moments.
[00:19:04]  Even with the like the Hillary Clinton thing, right?
[00:19:07]  When he used to debate Hillary Clinton, it was one of the things that I thought was really interesting when he debated her is if you remember watching these debates at all, he didn't, he didn't just come out and start hurling, you know, insults at Hillary Clinton, which would have played into her hands.
[00:19:25]  If he had just come out and started insulting her and she could have been like, oh, I mean, come on, guys, you really want this guy to be your president?
[00:19:31]  He's just so nasty.
[00:19:32]  You know, he let her be nasty.
[00:19:34]  He went out there, if you remember, and it was hard.
[00:19:36]  You could tell it was like hard for him.
[00:19:37]  Like he was like breathing really labored and heavy.
[00:19:40]  And he was like, you know, I respect Secretary Clinton, but we don't win anymore.
[00:19:46]  And we got to start winning as a country and like all of this stuff.
[00:19:49]  And then she would start going on the attack on him.
[00:19:52]  And as soon as she went on the attack, it was like, boom, boom.
[00:19:55]  Those were all his huge moments and huge lines.
[00:19:58]  You know, it's not, he didn't just say you should be in jail.
[00:20:02]  She said, it's a good thing no one with your temperament is going to be president.
[00:20:06]  And he goes, yeah, because you'd be in jail.
[00:20:08]  So he would counter punch over and over.
[00:20:11]  So you're kind of there in a situation where you have to kind of criticize him.
[00:20:15]  You've been criticizing him, you know, behind his back.
[00:20:17]  So then he lets you criticize him and then hammers him.
[00:20:19]  And what Trump will do, and I think he's smart enough.
[00:20:24]  Not again, not like on a, not like Donald Trump could write a book explaining why he has this ability.
[00:20:31]  I think it's just an instinctual thing.
[00:20:32]  But he's smart enough that he won't just go at Joe Biden for his cognitive ability.
[00:20:37]  He'll wait till Joe Biden starts stuttering and forgetting things and collapsing into himself like he does.
[00:20:44]  And then he'll have a little snide remark about it, but he'll bring it up.
[00:20:47]  He'll make sure that's an issue.
[00:20:49]  So Trump, you know, Biden would have a lot of trouble debating Donald Trump.
[00:20:53]  But I've been saying for a while now, it's worse than that.
[00:20:57]  This is the truth with Joe Biden.
[00:20:58]  I think you just got a little taste of it in that video.
[00:21:00]  This motherfucker cannot give a convention speech.
[00:21:05]  He can't give a speech for a half hour.
[00:21:08]  He cannot speak for 30 minutes without it just, he can't read a teleprompter for 30 minutes.
[00:21:15]  He's incapable of doing it.
[00:21:16]  He has trouble pulling off a three to five minute interview without some huge disaster.
[00:21:22]  And so I just, I don't think he can do it.
[00:21:25]  So they've already announced he's not going to the convention.
[00:21:27]  Okay.
[00:21:27]  So what's going to happen now, my guess is they're going to try to have him do a pre-recorded convention speech.
[00:21:36]  And this is just my guess because what I try to do is I try to put myself in the evil mind state of like, well, what would I do if I was running Joe Biden's campaign?
[00:21:46]  That's what I would do.
[00:21:47]  That's what I would do if I was running Joe Biden's campaign.
[00:21:50]  I go, we're going to find a way to not go.
[00:21:52]  It's not safe to have a convention, too many people together.
[00:21:54]  It's not, you know, with COVID, we can't go and do all this.
[00:21:57]  So what we're going to do is we're going to pre-record a thing and then we'll do as many takes as we have to do to get it as good as possible.
[00:22:07]  And I think they're going to have to edit it up because I don't care how many takes you give Joe Biden.
[00:22:11]  I don't think he's capable of delivering a half hour speech.
[00:22:15]  They might have to get him on some type of drugs, fucking pump him full of Adderall or some shit and try to get and cut it together and get it as clean as possible.
[00:22:24]  But it can't be obvious that it's cut together.
[00:22:26]  So they're going to have to do the best they can because it's still, you know, there's still going to be this major problem that he has that it's like, hey, if you want to be the alpha monkey, you got to kind of show up and at least demonstrate that you're prepared.
[00:22:41]  This is how human beings work, you know?
[00:22:43]  This is why like FDR had to ride around in his car because, you know, they didn't want the country to know he had polio because he's supposed to be Mr. Tough Guy.
[00:22:50]  And Joe Biden really likes that Mr. Tough guy, you know, kind of image.
[00:22:54]  So does Trump.
[00:22:55]  But so this is going to be a major, a major problem for him.
[00:22:59]  The other thing that's probably going to happen in the next week or two, and we'll see, but they're probably about to announce his VP, which you'd have to say takes on some pretty larger than normal significance when you're dealing with somebody who is Joe Biden's age and in the,
[00:23:26]  let's say, state that Joe Biden is in.
[00:23:30]  If you're, you know, For your average presidential year, it's not that big of a deal.
[00:23:36]  I mean, you know, well, I guess it depends, right?
[00:23:39]  Like, for John McCain, his VP was a much bigger deal, and they made a bigger deal out of it.
[00:23:43]  And, you know, rightfully so, because he was old, you know.
[00:23:47]  And Joe Biden, his age, I believe he's a few years older than the average man lives to.
[00:23:57]  So I might be wrong about that, but he's right around the age where the average man dies.
[00:24:02]  And so when you're at that age, the chance of you dying every year is, well, a lot larger than it is for some, you know, person who's not that age.
[00:24:13]  And so it takes on significance.
[00:24:14]  And they talked about this with John McCain.
[00:24:16]  That was what a lot of people criticized John McCain for for picking Sarah Palin, which, you know, is legitimate for sure.
[00:24:23]  Sarah Palin was not ready to be president of the United States.
[00:24:26]  That's for sure.
[00:24:28]  And, you know, that was like a Hail Mary because, you know, he was getting creamed.
[00:24:35]  And so he had to do something to try to get himself back in the race.
[00:24:38]  So he picked Sarah Palin.
[00:24:39]  It's probably a good move for his candidacy, but not so much for the country.
[00:24:45]  Oh, yeah.
[00:24:46]  Okay.
[00:24:46]  So Joe Biden's about a year older than the average age.
[00:24:49]  Thank you, Brian.
[00:24:52]  A year older than the average man dies.
[00:24:56]  But it makes sense, right, that like, say, for John McCain, his VP was a much more important pick than for, say, Barack Obama, because Barack Obama was pretty young, pretty healthy.
[00:25:09]  You know, he was a smoker, which is still to this day my favorite thing about Obama.
[00:25:15]  But it's like, yeah, why can't men be cool anymore?
[00:25:19]  But so anyway, you know, Obama was young and healthy, and the idea that he was going to die in office was not a very high probability.
[00:25:28]  But with Joe Biden, it's higher than it was with John McCain.
[00:25:32]  And also just the state of his cognitive abilities are so apparent to anyone paying attention.
[00:25:37]  So this is a big deal.
[00:25:39]  And he said from the beginning that he was going to pick a woman and he pretty much said, I'm going to pick a black woman.
[00:25:44]  That was pretty much, yeah, I think he didn't exactly conclude that, but he pretty much said, I'm going to pick a black woman.
[00:25:51]  Which, as I've said before on the show, it's kind of shitty thing to do to the black woman that you're picking.
[00:25:56]  I mean, if you like, you would think if you wanted to like help your VP pick out, right, and you wanted to make her look good, what you would do is say, I'm going to pick the most qualified person for the job and then pick a black woman and be like, see, she was the most qualified person for the job.
[00:26:14]  But he didn't do that.
[00:26:16]  He just said, I'm going to pick the most qualified black woman for the job, which is kind of, so then you leave your VP in the situation of fucking like, well, you're the most qualified black woman out there, which is what, you know, okay, it's one thing to kind of deal with this, you know, like it's, I don't know, affirmative action for better word type mentality.
[00:26:42]  But when you're talking about somebody, you know, running for president of the United States whose VP is so important to start playing that shit, I think, number one, I think a lot of people are going to be turned off by that.
[00:26:56]  Now, he's saying that it's down to a few people who he's considering, but it seems like the reports are saying most likely it's between Kamala Harris and Susan Rice, both black women.
[00:27:10]  Kamala Harris, of course, is a sitting senator.
[00:27:13]  She was a candidate for president of the United States.
[00:27:16]  She was nuked by Tulsi Gabbard out of the campaign.
[00:27:21]  And Susan Rice was an ambassador to the United Nations and Barack Obama's national security advisor.
[00:27:30]  So, these are the two that are being floated out as the two frontrunners.
[00:27:35]  And, you know, I got to say, there's real problems with both of them.
[00:27:40]  And I think both of them will hurt Joe Biden.
[00:27:44]  And now he's got himself, you know, in this position where he can't go any other direction because he's been promising this for so long.
[00:27:52]  But he, well, and you know, like, even more to the point, and I want to be careful in how I say this, because I don't want to come off saying something I don't believe.
[00:28:03]  So I don't like, I don't know, but it's quite possible that if the right black woman came along, Americans would want to support her.
[00:28:16]  Like, particularly on the Democratic ticket, it's possible.
[00:28:20]  I think they like the identity of where they're like, yeah, you know, breaking the glass ceiling and we're not racist and all that shit.
[00:28:27]  Barack Obama, you know, got more votes than anyone else has ever gotten for president of the United States.
[00:28:34]  It's still more people, you know, voted against him and didn't vote than voted for him, which is an interesting, you know, observation, I think.
[00:28:43]  But, you know, he got a lot of votes.
[00:28:46]  Hillary Clinton was obviously a woman and she got a ton of votes.
[00:28:49]  She got more votes than Donald Trump did total.
[00:28:52]  I know, you know, some right-wingers don't like that, but that is the truth.
[00:28:56]  And so it's, you know, I don't think America is, it's impossible that a lot of people would vote for a woman or for a black person.
[00:29:06]  We've already seen evidence of that in 2008, 2012, and 2016.
[00:29:11]  But isn't it a kind of weird thing?
[00:29:13]  Like, if you think about this, right?
[00:29:15]  If you go that Joe Biden just decided I'm going to have a black woman as my vice president.
[00:29:21]  And it's like, okay, but what evidence is there that that's something Americans really want?
[00:29:28]  Like that that's something they really care about.
[00:29:30]  That's a priority to them.
[00:29:32]  I mean, even within the Democratic primary, they didn't support the black woman who you're talking about picking as your VP.
[00:29:41]  So even to Democrats, that wasn't that big of a thing.
[00:29:44]  And I think to most Americans, it's kind of like, I think they tend to like resent the fact that that's the criteria that you're using to pick.
[00:29:56]  So I just don't, like, if you're just looking at kind of like in some weird way, the market data, even though obviously this is government and not like a free market, but if you're just looking at the market, it almost seems like, what exactly is your evidence that people really want this?
[00:30:14]  Why is this a smart political move?
[00:30:18]  And I do think that this, you know, just forcing this in when there's no real indicator that people want this probably isn't the smartest political move.
[00:30:29]  And then the two choices that at least have been floated out there both have really big problems attached to them.
[00:30:35]  Now, not just the problems that I have with them, because those in many ways I think are kind of aside from the problems that voters have with these two women.
[00:30:47]  So like I'll do Susan Rice first, right?
[00:30:51]  Like obviously my problem with Susan Rice is that she was Barack Obama's national security advisor while he conducted, you know, just the most horrific criminal foreign policy imaginable.
[00:31:07]  She came on, I think, in 2013.
[00:31:10]  I could be wrong about that, but I think she came on in 2013, maybe 2014.
[00:31:15]  So, you know, he had already started with the civil war in Syria, but it certainly continued.
[00:31:22]  And the arming and funding of al-Qaeda and ISIS certainly continued on her watch.
[00:31:28]  And the whole episode in Yemen was pretty much all on her watch.
[00:31:32]  So, you know, like really horrific shit, hundreds of thousands of people dead.
[00:31:37]  And I just hate the woman for all of that.
[00:31:40]  And she's an absolute hawk, absolute hawk, like one of the worst of the worst, and was super critical of Donald Trump for talking about pulling troops out of Syria and was, you know, just, she's just horrible.
[00:31:54]  She's, you know, a Democrat neocon, essentially, neoliberal, whatever you want to call her, just awful.
[00:32:01]  Now, I don't know if that stuff is in the front of people's minds as much.
[00:32:04]  Although if those issues do come up, I think that the popular opinion is against her.
[00:32:11]  But the real problem that Susan Rice is going to have, and for some reason, a whole lot of fucking people really do care about this, particularly the Republicans, and they will use this and I think effectively, is the Benghazi thing.
[00:32:25]  And she was the face of Benghazi.
[00:32:28]  So she was the one that the Obama administration sent out to all the Sunday shows after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi to say that it was in response to this video, which was, you know, just a lie.
[00:32:43]  I mean, she, and they know it was a lie.
[00:32:45]  I mean, even Hillary Clinton's emails revealed that they knew that night.
[00:32:49]  They knew that night exactly what happened in Benghazi.
[00:32:51]  It had nothing to do with this video, which was a ridiculous excuse to begin with, the idea that like, oh, there was this video that was making fun of radical Islamists.
[00:33:03]  So, of course, they had no other option but to go and start, you know, killing people and burning shit or whatever.
[00:33:11]  But that's a big lie.
[00:33:12]  And she's the face of that lie now.
[00:33:15]  And so that's going to be a big, that'll be a huge talking point that'll be used against her.
[00:33:20]  Now, I don't know.
[00:33:20]  I don't know how effective that'll be, but I think it certainly will be used.
[00:33:26]  The other problem is that there's really nothing about her.
[00:33:29]  Again, she's one of these people, like, where was there ever really an organic demand for Susan Rice?
[00:33:37]  Like, why?
[00:33:38]  Who really wanted her?

=== The Failed Progressive Move (02:12) ===

[00:33:42]  Just seems like a pick that isn't going to add anything to him and could take something away from him.
[00:33:47]  And the other one is Kamala Harris, who, you know, look, like, there's a reason why she fell flat on her face.
[00:33:53]  I mean, she was really pushed hard by the corporate press, really hard.
[00:33:59]  I mean, after that first debate, they like were anointing her, the frontrunner status, and she just did nothing.
[00:34:04]  No one was into her.
[00:34:06]  And part of it is because she's incredibly strange.
[00:34:12]  She comes off like a sociopath, which, you know, I don't know if she is or isn't.
[00:34:17]  My guess is that she is.
[00:34:20]  But she's weird.
[00:34:21]  She's like, she's basically a Hillary Clinton type, laughs at very weird moments, just has no charisma in her at all.
[00:34:30]  She's also just, you know, the progressive left does not like her.
[00:34:36]  Of course they don't.
[00:34:37]  She was like an aggressive prosecutor.
[00:34:39]  So the same kind of group that you're trying to appeal to with, oh, we threw you a black woman is the same group that is not going to like her.
[00:34:47]  So I just, I think it's, it hurts him a lot more than it helps.
[00:34:52]  And the other thing that's kind of weird is that her big moment in the debate that the corporate press was trying to celebrate was her basically calling Joe Biden a racist.
[00:35:00]  I mean, she did that thing, that progressive thing where they go, no, I'm not calling you a racist, but you're kind of a racist, you know, that bad thing.
[00:35:10]  But she, you know, she basically attacked the guy as a racist and it flopped and fell flat on its face.
[00:35:16]  And for them, him to then come back around and pick her, not only is it weird, but it makes him look like such a bitch.
[00:35:22]  Like, what a bitch move to say, someone would call you something like that.
[00:35:26]  Like that's a, you know, that's not just saying like you got a policy wrong or something like that.
[00:35:30]  It's basically like you're a fucking racist.
[00:35:32]  You worked with bigots and you were against busing, you know, the most relevant policy in 2020.
[00:35:38]  So for him to go back and pick her, it just seems like, how would that not make him look weak?
[00:35:45]  And that's kind of a problem already that he's looking so weak, like physically and mentally weak.
[00:35:51]  I mean, listen to that interview.

=== Racism Accusations Flopped (03:01) ===

[00:35:54]  All I'm saying, right?
[00:35:55]  And just back to that, that interview is like, there's no way that the last few months of the campaign, he's going to have to do some interviews.
[00:36:02]  He's going to have to take some questions.
[00:36:04]  He's not going to be able to just like run, you know, pre-recorded edited ads.
[00:36:09]  He's going to have to give a speech.
[00:36:12]  And maybe he can avoid the speech.
[00:36:13]  Maybe he can avoid the debates.
[00:36:15]  I don't know.
[00:36:16]  But man, if he doesn't, it's going to be bad.
[00:36:19]  If he doesn't, it's going to be bad.
[00:36:20]  I would, you know, I can imagine if I were if I were on Joe Biden's campaign, I'd just be like, send all the surrogates out.
[00:36:28]  We're sending all the surrogates out.
[00:36:29]  He's not doing anything, not doing anything.
[00:36:32]  No speeches, no debates, nothing.
[00:36:33]  If it costs us, it costs us, but we're going to roll the dice on that strategy because I just, you could not send this guy out.
[00:36:39]  And if I were anyone at the DNC or a big Democratic donor or anyone like that, it's like, we're putting someone else in.
[00:36:45]  This is insane.
[00:36:46]  I don't know who, but it can't be him.
[00:36:48]  Probably, I would have said a couple months ago, maybe Cuomo was the guy.
[00:36:52]  He had all this TV time, but now I think he's too fucking damaged because he fucking presided over the state with the worst record on COVID.
[00:36:59]  And he sent a bunch of COVID positive old people in in nursing homes to kill a whole bunch more grandmothers and grandfathers.
[00:37:04]  So I don't think he's really a great pick at this point either.
[00:37:07]  I don't know, but anyone, but he'd be better than Biden.
[00:37:10]  Anyone would be better than Biden.
[00:37:13]  There's just a lot of weirdness going on.
[00:37:16]  And it's going to be really interesting to see where it all goes.
[00:37:20]  So, you know, we'll be here breaking it all down, talking shit about all of it.
[00:37:25]  All right, let's take a quick second.
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=== Creeping Authoritarianism (15:15) ===

[00:38:56]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:38:58]  Okay, the other thing that I wanted to play was a nice, I wanted to check in on our favorite little piggy over at CNN who had a, oof, a whopper of a of a show this past week.
[00:39:15]  And I just, when I saw this video, I was like, all right, well, we got to play this and talk about it.
[00:39:19]  So let's let's take it away.
[00:39:21]  Our favorite little piggy, Brian Stelter.
[00:39:23]  But first, an election mess in the making with three months before ballots will be counted.
[00:39:29]  Picture all of us Americans in a car together.
[00:39:33]  President Trump is the driver, and he is trying to drive us off the road.
[00:39:39]  He is trying to crash the car.
[00:39:42]  In this analogy, the car is our democracy.
[00:39:45]  It is old.
[00:39:45]  It's got a lot of miles on it, but it's still running strong.
[00:39:48]  It's been well maintained.
[00:39:50]  It stays humming along.
[00:39:51]  It stays on the road through voting, through elections.
[00:39:56]  But the driver, ever since 2016, I don't know, either he wants to go off-roading or he wants the car all to himself or he doesn't know where he's going.
[00:40:06]  Something's going on with the driver.
[00:40:09]  He's trying to crash the car, but all of us are along for the ride.
[00:40:14]  The president's rhetoric about the coming election is the equivalent of trying to crash your car.
[00:40:20]  Through his tweets, through his statements, he is eroding confidence in the democratic process, making a crash more likely.
[00:40:26]  And he's doing it for no good reason.
[00:40:28]  It's just his own ego.
[00:40:30]  And his media pals are helping him do it.
[00:40:32]  So everybody else, besides Trump and the pro-Trump media, everybody else, all the responsible newsrooms, elected officials, civic leaders, everyone else has a huge responsibility in the next three months.
[00:40:45]  You know, this fall's election, culminating with a big broadcast on November 3rd, is probably not going to look like these past elections.
[00:40:52]  Well, 2020 is now an unprecedented situation.
[00:40:55]  We're not going to be seeing balloon drops in massive convention halls and arenas.
[00:41:01]  You know, we're not going to be seeing campaign stops with huge rallies in all these different states.
[00:41:07]  And that's largely due to the pandemic.
[00:41:09]  Due to mail-in voting and other reasons, Election Day will be more like election week.
[00:41:15]  That's the way to think about it.
[00:41:16]  In fact, television networks like this one are already planning for much longer vote counting coverage.
[00:41:22]  We're probably going to see long lines at short-staffed, poorly funded precincts.
[00:41:28]  We're probably going to hear concerns about mail-in ballots and not getting delivered and counted on time due to Postal Service problems.
[00:41:35]  And the president is going to keep lying about the likelihood of voting fraud.
[00:41:40]  Fact checkers are going to keep debunking those lies, but lots of people will be left confused, not knowing what to believe, or maybe not even knowing how to vote at all.
[00:41:49]  So in November, in December, they will be left wondering if the whole thing was legit.
[00:41:57]  That is the car crash.
[00:41:59]  And the president is behind the wheel.
[00:42:02]  Keep in mind, there's an entire universe out there designed to make Trump's claims seem true or, you know, at least true-ish, true enough.
[00:42:10]  He's taking a lot of his talking points from Fox, including that tweet, which was spurred by Fox and friends.
[00:42:15]  Keep in mind, Fox News calls its election coverage Democracy 2020.
[00:42:22]  I hope they'll live up to that word in 2020.
[00:42:25]  Democracy.
[00:42:27]  Because we are witnessing creeping authoritarianism in America.
[00:42:32]  The New York Times called it Trump's campaign to undercut democracy.
[00:42:36]  And you can say it was just a tweet, and you can say he was just kidding.
[00:42:39]  It is still creeping authoritarianism, even if the guy is joking.
[00:42:46]  Of course, the good news this week is the Republicans did immediately challenge Trump's musing about delaying the election.
[00:42:51]  And more good news, news outlets did a really good job of truth squatting right away, immediately pointing out in the headlines that Trump didn't have the authority to delay anything anyway.
[00:43:02]  But it's August 2nd.
[00:43:04]  The election is November 3rd.
[00:43:06]  There's going to be three more months of this.
[00:43:08]  Three more months of the lies.
[00:43:10]  Three more months of the sowing doubt, of the delegitimizing the election.
[00:43:16]  Three more months of this.
[00:43:19]  And the president still has the keys.
[00:43:21]  He is still behind the wheel.
[00:43:23]  His words still have power in this looming car crash.
[00:43:28]  All right.
[00:43:30]  I mean, that was just incredible.
[00:43:33]  Just incredible.
[00:43:34]  Inch to inch from beginning to end, the just outrageous agenda-driven stupidity over at CNN is really, it's something to behold.
[00:43:47]  So let's take that apart piece by piece, right?
[00:43:51]  So Brian Stelter starts off with a dumbass analogy that would be a bad third grade teacher's presentation in the class.
[00:44:06]  Democracy is kind of like a car, and the president's kind of like driving.
[00:44:10]  And what keeps the car running is voting and like, what, what?
[00:44:15]  Okay, no, that's not at all actually how the country does work or how it's supposed to work or anything like that.
[00:44:24]  I mean, I think the idea of this whole bullshit government institution is that the president presides over the executive branch of a democratic republic.
[00:44:37]  He's not driving a car that maintains all of our lives in it.
[00:44:41]  And then, of course, the, you know, really just kind of shocking thing that's become, it's always been true, but it's become much more transparent in the Trump years is just that, like, by the way, Brian Stelter is not an opinion journalist at CNN.
[00:44:56]  He is the media watchdog guy.
[00:44:58]  He's supposed to get on there and tell you, you know, kind of watchdog the journalists and how their coverage, whether their coverage has been objective or not and shit like that.
[00:45:07]  And he just comes out like, like, you know, it's, there's like the pretense of not being an opinion journalist is like completely gone.
[00:45:16]  It's like, well, here's a little analogy.
[00:45:18]  And then Trump's the driver and he's trying to drive the car off a cliff.
[00:45:22]  That's the level of analysis that Brian Stelter comes with.
[00:45:26]  So then he basically goes on to describe, hey, hey, little girl.
[00:45:32]  My daughter's looking at me through the window.
[00:45:34]  He goes on to describe what a disaster mail-in voting is going to be.
[00:45:40]  Look, man, this is going to take longer to count.
[00:45:42]  It's like there's going to be post office problems.
[00:45:44]  There's going to be all of these things.
[00:45:46]  It's going to be a fucking disaster.
[00:45:47]  But don't let Trump convince you it's a disaster.
[00:45:49]  Don't let Trump convince you that there could be any voter fraud or anything like that, which is just, you know, hilarious and ridiculous.
[00:45:58]  But there was something at the end there.
[00:46:00]  The thing about authoritarianism, it's amazing how these terms are used, right?
[00:46:04]  Like democracy is just anything good and authoritarianism is the opposite of democracy, which is so ridiculous, right?
[00:46:12]  Like it's like the words don't even mean anything anymore.
[00:46:16]  Like, first of all, what if the majority of people vote for authoritarian policies?
[00:46:22]  Does that just fucking destroy your whole worldview where democracy is over here and authoritarianism is over here?
[00:46:28]  Democracy is people voting.
[00:46:29]  What if they vote for authoritarianism?
[00:46:31]  Then what?
[00:46:32]  Okay.
[00:46:33]  What if somebody who's not democratically elected seizes power and is an authoritarian?
[00:46:42]  These words have nothing to do with each other.
[00:46:44]  I mean, like, they're not opposites.
[00:46:46]  One doesn't lead to the other.
[00:46:48]  If one is damaged, anyway.
[00:46:51]  But so he says that Donald Trump, so even in his own thing where he says there is creeping authoritarianism, and then he has to acknowledge, because it seems pretty clear that Trump was joking in this treat, in this tweet, but he goes, even if he was joking, it's still authoritarianism.
[00:47:07]  Just joking about democracy is authoritarian.
[00:47:10]  And then, even if he doesn't have the power, he goes, this is the funny thing, right?
[00:47:14]  This word actually comes out of his mouth.
[00:47:17]  He goes, even though Trump doesn't have the authority to do this, authority, his word.
[00:47:22]  He goes, even if Trump doesn't have the authority to do this, it's still authoritarian.
[00:47:29]  That's a radically new definition of authoritarian that I was not familiar with.
[00:47:34]  It turns out, even without authority, it's still authoritarian.
[00:47:39]  But I really, here's the thing that is my actual biggest takeaway, or it's really more of a question about how this is received, right?
[00:47:46]  Like what it's like to be the average CNN viewer listening to this.
[00:47:54]  I know there's only like, you know, a few hundred people outside of airports who listen, but for those people, like what's it like to listen to someone say, okay, so President Trump tweeted about delaying the election and he's joking around.
[00:48:08]  Or maybe even let's say he's not joking around and he's tweeting about delaying the election, but he doesn't have the authority to do that.
[00:48:13]  And the Republicans rebuke him and it's not going to happen.
[00:48:17]  That is creeping authoritarianism.
[00:48:21]  Just imagine average Joe Sixpack American or even like middle class, upper middle class, professional, whoever the fuck it is that's watching CNN, leaning left, leaning right, whatever it is.
[00:48:32]  Imagine saying that the president tweeting something on which he has no authority to do anything about and no one seriously thinks he will do anything about, even as Brian Selzer just told you, CNN is preparing for this fucking election week.
[00:48:46]  So that is creeping authoritarianism.
[00:48:49]  Just think about that in the context of America in August 2020.
[00:48:55]  You're talking about creeping authoritarianism.
[00:49:01]  We spent three months turning on the TV every day to listen to a governor's press conference to find out what we're allowed to do.
[00:49:14]  This isn't an exaggeration.
[00:49:16]  I mean, straight up, like, am I allowed to go to a bookstore?
[00:49:19]  Am I allowed to see my family?
[00:49:21]  Am I allowed to have a funeral for my dead relative?
[00:49:24]  Am I, you know, like all the most basic things.
[00:49:26]  Am I allowed to go to church?
[00:49:28]  Am I allowed to, like, all of the most basic things.
[00:49:30]  We are literally listening to governors to tell us what we're allowed to do.
[00:49:35]  The most intimate details of our lives, things that even hardcore libertarians like myself never even imagined a year ago would be in the realm of things that are, you know, decided by the government.
[00:49:51]  I was already outraged by the level of authoritarianism last year, but imagine sitting there, seriously, like people are living through this.
[00:49:59]  And it's like, this is creeping authoritarianism, this tweet.
[00:50:04]  But yet you have nothing to say about this real, tangible, undeniable example of creeping authoritarianism.
[00:50:11]  Even if you are terrified of COVID and think every last government policy has been justified, you'd still have to acknowledge that it's authoritarian, that the government is telling you whether or not you can go to church, whether or not you can go with your wife, you know, to a sonogram appointment.
[00:50:30]  I mean, what, what the fuck?
[00:50:32]  This is one of the things that's so weird to me.
[00:50:35]  You know, sometimes one of the issues that you have, and this is something that I always try to balance, right?
[00:50:40]  Like I always try to, and luckily for me, I have a lot of friends who are somewhat apolitical, and that keeps me in a good space.
[00:50:50]  Because it's very easy when you're obsessed with politics, and especially when you're, you know, like an ideologue, like I kind of am, when you're in that space, it's very easy to be removed from what the average person thinks because the average person is not an ideologue and the average person is not obsessed with politics.
[00:51:08]  So it's very, you know, you, you're like, come on, this has to be obvious to everyone, but it's not necessarily obvious to everyone.
[00:51:14]  And that doesn't mean that you're right or wrong.
[00:51:16]  It's just you're not in the same wavelength as everyone else.
[00:51:22]  And so it's helpful to me that I have people outside of, you know, who aren't in this world that are in my life.
[00:51:27]  And I can kind of pick their brains sometimes.
[00:51:29]  And it helps me, you know, stay kind of grounded to where real people, for lack of a better term, are.
[00:51:38]  But I wonder, this is what's so hard for me.
[00:51:40]  It's like you look around and you see people, okay, like.
[00:51:46]  You're watching TV to find out from the governor what you're allowed to do today.
[00:51:50]  You go outside and everybody's in masks.
[00:51:53]  Kids can't go to school, you know?
[00:51:56]  And if they do go to school this next year, it's going to be in this crazy situation where like they have to fucking wear masks and they can only go a couple days a week.
[00:52:04]  And my feelings about public school and shit aside, just that's, you know, seeing this whole world and there's no sports and there's no entertainment and there's no parties and there's no get-togethers and you're not seeing your family.
[00:52:16]  And then you have riots and looting and people, you know, like just the horrific just like views and, you know, flat out racism of Black Lives Matter and all this shit.
[00:52:32]  And you just see all of this.
[00:52:33]  And I'm like, hey, regular Joe Six Pack American, do you want this?
[00:52:41]  Like, aren't you against all of this?
[00:52:46]  Why would you want your country to become this?
[00:52:50]  Isn't this just so tangibly, demonstrably worse than it was?
[00:52:56]  Why would anyone be for this?
[00:52:59]  And it's really a question that I kind of struggle with.
[00:53:02]  And I hope that the, like, at least a large percentage of people are like, no, fuck this.
[00:53:12]  We don't want this.
[00:53:14]  This is not the country we want to live in.
[00:53:16]  This is all awful.
[00:53:18]  And by the way, it doesn't have to be this way.
[00:53:20]  It really doesn't have to be this way.
[00:53:22]  It's not, this is not anything that the gods came down and decided this has to be the course of the country.
[00:53:29]  It doesn't.
[00:53:29]  It's just that a lot of powerful people are pushing it.
[00:53:32]  And so far, it's working.
[00:53:34]  But that doesn't mean it'll work forever.
[00:53:36]  But I've really been thinking about this a lot lately.
[00:53:37]  Like, who the fuck wants this?
[00:53:39]  I see it when you drive around New York City.
[00:53:43]  Who the fuck wants the city to be like this?
[00:53:45]  Rather than the way it was just last year.
[00:53:47]  I'm not saying it was perfect, had its problems, but it's so much worse.
[00:53:51]  And don't the majority of people here feel that way?
[00:53:54]  I don't know.
[00:53:55]  I don't know if I'm right or wrong about that, but I guess we'll find out.
[00:54:01]  All right, that's the episode for today.
[00:54:03]  I'm going to get back to enjoying my vacation.
[00:54:05]  Hope everybody's doing well.
[00:54:07]  I'll be home this week and we will chat again soon.
[00:54:11]  Peace.